Acts of Mercy (13 page)

S
am’s first inclination was to decline the waffles Trula had saved for him, even though he knew it would have been rude. He felt too distracted to eat. But he’d wanted to meet Emme Caldwell and he might as well do it now. So even though he wanted to close the front door behind him and keep on going when he helped Fiona carry her boxes back to her car, he went back into the house.

“So how was your meeting with the FBI agent?” Emme asked after the introductions were made. She’d just tucked Chloe’s shirt into her shorts and sent her outside to play with her kitten. “Did it seem weird, since you used to be the agent meeting with non-Bureau personnel?”

“A little odd, but Fiona and I worked with a lot of the same people and have some mutual friends, so it didn’t seem as strange as I suppose it could have,” he said as he dug into the pile of fluffy waffles, whipped cream, and cherries that Trula prepared for him. “Dear God, Trula, this is one of the best things I ever ate.”

“Well, you’ve been eating a lot of meals at the Conroy
Diner,” she replied, “so anything decent is going to taste even better.”

“How do you know where I eat when I don’t eat here?”

She merely smiled, then turned back to what she was doing. Emme laughed out loud.

“Trula knows just about everyone in Conroy. She stops in at the diner once a week ‘for coffee.’” Emme made quotation marks with her fingers. “Which is just her way of keeping her ear to the ground.”

“You have to keep up with what’s happening in your community,” Trula sniffed.

“There’s a local paper for that,” Emme reminded her. “The
Conroy Courier
comes out once a week. You could get your news from it.”

“I get better info at the diner.”

“Were you able to learn anything helpful from the agent?” Emme turned back to Sam.

“Possibly. She’s going to have some reports copied and shipped here for me to take a look at. We’ll see where it goes.” Sam couldn’t wait to change the subject. “So when do you suppose Mr. Magellan will be back? I’m looking forward to meeting him and working with him.”

“You won’t be working with him for long if you call him Mister to his face. He prefers Robert,” Emme told him. “Even Chloe can’t call him Mr. Magellan.”

“Must be a family thing,” Sam observed. “His cousin, Father Burch, stopped in upstairs this afternoon. He apparently doesn’t like to be called Father.”

“He likes to be called Father,” Trula told him, “he just likes to be Kevin at home. And this is, for all
practical purposes, his home. His family. Therefore, first names apply.”

“Does he get involved in all the cases?” Sam asked.

“Only if there’s an area where he can contribute,” Emme said. “Why do you ask? Did he get involved in yours?”

“Actually, he had some good insights to share.” Sam related the priest’s interpretation of the crime scenes.

“Wow.” Emme sat down across the table from Sam. “That’s bizarre. The acts of mercy?”

Trula turned around and leaned against the counter, a puzzled look on her face.

“You say you have three murders?” she asked.

Sam nodded.

“But … weren’t there
seven
acts of mercy?”

The fork that was headed toward Sam’s mouth stopped in midair and hung suspended there. His appetite suddenly gone, Sam cursed softly under his breath.

Seven acts of mercy. He should have remembered that from his long-ago catechism classes after school with Sister Ignatius.

Seven acts of mercy. Three deaths.

Were there four they had yet to discover, or were there four more victims on the killer’s list?

“Fiona, it’s Sam.” He was disappointed to have to leave voice mail. “Sam DelVecchio. Please give me a call when you get this message.” He repeated his number. “It’s important.”

He disconnected the call and drove through the gates at the front of Robert’s property. He waved at
the guard in his little protective house that sat just outside the gate and drove off. It was too early for dinner—Trula’s admonitions aside, the Conroy Diner actually served pretty good food—and Sam was in no mood to return to his hotel. He envied Emme’s residence on the Magellan property. Before he left, she’d given him a tour of the carriage house where she and Chloe would soon be living, and he admitted to experiencing pangs of jealousy. The quarters were spacious and light, with lots of windows and beautiful views of the gardens he’d noticed Trula tending even as she supervised a crew of gardeners.

“I know what you mean,” Emme had said. “We’ve been looking at houses for several weeks now, and this is so much nicer than any place we’ve seen. Easily as nice as our old house back in California, and even bigger. We’re very lucky.” She pointed out the living room window to where her daughter and Trula sat on a lounge near the pool. “The luckiest part is finding Trula. She’s the best thing that’s happened to Chloe and me, probably ever. She’s the grandmother Chloe hasn’t had. She’s the mother …”

She stopped there, and Sam realized she was afraid of revealing too much of herself to a stranger. Well, Sam didn’t fault her for that. He was pretty close-mouthed about most things himself. But he figured that he knew what Emme had been about to say, that Trula was the mother she’d never had, and he wondered about her story. Not that he’d ask—that would be intruding. If she ever wanted to talk about it, she would, if they became friends.

What he did want to talk about was Robert’s search for his son.

“Are they any closer to finding the little boy?” he asked.

Emme shook her head. “Yes and no. They have established that Ian had been in the cabin in the woods we found out about yesterday. The FBI has been called in and in the meantime, the state police crime-scene techs have been all over it. Lots of fingerprints, lots of trace. The case is being treated like a kidnapping now. Maybe you saw that on the news?”

When Sam admitted that he hadn’t had the TV on all weekend, and that he’d forgotten to pick up a newspaper that morning, Emme continued.

“It’s being assumed that whoever took Ian from the car stayed with him in the cabin, and that he’s alive somewhere, that someone is passing him off as their own. The FBI is preparing a computer-generated age-progression photo to show what he probably looks like now. That will be as widely circulated as possible. TV, newspapers, magazines. Robert’s goal is to get that photo in front of the public at every opportunity. He figures that the publicity plus the reward he’s going to offer is going to get someone’s attention.”

“What’s he offering?” Sam was curious.

“One million dollars.”

Sam whistled. “There’s some incentive to keep your eyes open.”

“Here’s hoping. Susanna says now that Robert is pretty sure his son is alive, there will be no living with him until they find him. She said he’s been relentless these past few days. Not that I blame him, of course.” She paused. “Do you have any children, Sam?”

“No. My wife is deceased. We never got around to having kids before she died.” Sam could have added
that he and Carly had just started investigating fertility treatments when she was killed, but after the day he’d had, he didn’t feel up to bringing that into the conversation.

“I’m sorry. How long has it been, Sam?”

“Three years.” He hoped she wouldn’t pursue it but knew that she would.

“May I ask, was she ill …?”

Sam took a breath and told the story.

“Sam, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” he’d told her. What else could he say?

He’d taken the long way back to his hotel, past the old factories and through the narrow streets where the workers of those boarded-up factories had once lived. Some of them probably still did, he reminded himself. He drove up the hill leading to the nicest part of Conroy, the gracious homes the factory owners had built for themselves and their families. This part of town seemed to be experiencing a rebirth, evident in the number of homes that sported fresh coats of paint and new roofs, porches with colorful potted plants on the newly repaired stairs. For some reason, it raised his spirits to know that here, at least, someone was looking to the future with some optimism. For the past several hours, Sam had felt an anxiety he’d never experienced before.

Was he somehow responsible for the deaths of those three men? Were there others?

He drove to a park on the outskirts of town and left his car in the lot. He began to walk, first to the pond, but there were children there and he merely walked around it. There was a hiking path that led into the woods and he followed it without thinking. He
walked the full 10.7 miles around the park—which signs identified as the Merriweather Arboretum—but even the exertion required to walk that distance in clothes better suited to a professional meeting than a hike in ninety-three degree heat did nothing to calm him. He returned to his car and drove back to the hotel, where he changed into shorts, a tank, and his running shoes, and took off somewhat mindlessly.

Sam ran for the better part of an hour before he stopped, his breathing labored and his clothes stuck to his sweating body. He pulled a five-dollar bill from one of his socks and went into a convenience store and purchased a bottle of water, which he drank even as he paid for it. He left the change on the counter and stuck the remaining bills back into his sock. He pitched the empty plastic bottle into the trash bin just outside the door. He walked the first half mile on his way back to his room, then picked up the pace and ran the rest of the way. With every footfall he asked himself the same question.
What had he done that had cost those men their lives?

Sam emerged from his shower to hear the phone ringing. He caught it just as voice mail was kicking in. He glanced at the number of the missed call and redialed. Fiona answered on the second ring.

“Hi,” she said. “I was just leaving you a message. What’s up?”

“Have you by any chance called anyone at the Bureau about running a list of my old cases?”

“Actually, yes, I called Will. He’s the best I know when it comes to the computers. He can wring information
out of even the most reluctant program.” She paused. “Was there someone else you had in mind?”

“No, no. I was thinking Will would be the person to get on this. He is the best, I agree.”

“And he never whines if you call him on a Sunday, which I just did. He said he’d get back to us as soon as he could but it might take a few days to narrow down the field.”

“Narrow down the field?”

“He said it was unlikely that everyone on the list would have a reason to be gunning for you. He gave me a few examples, like wives who were just as happy to see their husbands behind bars, kids who’d shed no tears when they were removed from abusive homes, that sort of thing. Most of the actors you had involvement with are still in prison or dead, so that would eliminate a lot of potentials right there. So we’ll see what he comes back to us with.” Fiona added, “He said he was going to have Annie McCall look over the list to see if anyone stood out to her.”

“I can do that,” he protested. “Annie’s busy enough these days.”

“Well, the new guy does appear to be a bit of a dud, between you and me, but maybe he’ll do better once he gets his feet on the ground. But I think John thinks that maybe you’re too close to the …”

“Wait a minute. You went to John with this?”

“I had to, Sam. He’s my boss. Regardless of your relationship with him, I still answer to him. If something relevant comes up on one of my cases, he needs to know about it.”

Sam stewed in silence. It was annoying enough that she’d discussed this with his former boss, but even
more annoying to know that she was absolutely right. His long history with John aside, he was now potentially a player in a case the Bureau was handling.

“Sam? Are you there?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t avoid talking to him about this. Especially if there’s a killer lurking in one of our files, someone out to seek revenge on one of our agents because of something said agent may or may not have done while working a case.” She corrected herself. “Former agent, that is. You understand that, right?”

“Yeah. I understand.”

“So did something occur to you after I left? Any flashes of brilliance that will lead us to the killer?”

“The only flash of brilliance came from Trula Comfort. She reminded me that there were seven acts of mercy.” He let that sink in for a moment.

“Shit.”

“That was pretty much my reaction, too.”

“So what’s that mean? Either there are four more we haven’t caught up with yet …”

“Or four more to come. Either way, it isn’t pretty.”

“I’m going to have to go back to VICAP and see if I missed anything. Maybe there were others and I was too focused on the strangulation followed by postmortem stab wounds. Let me see what else I can come up with.”

“Will you get back to me?”

“Absolutely. I promise. I’ll be tied up all tomorrow morning and possibly the afternoon as well, but I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Thanks. I’ll wait to hear from you.” He was about to hang up when Fiona said, “Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“I don’t think I’m in any danger. This guy’s going after random victims, right? If this has something to do with me, I wouldn’t be random, would I?”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that maybe these random victims are substitutes for you?” she said softly. “That maybe this is a revenge thing intended to get your attention, drag you into it, so he can play with you a little before he comes after you?”

Sam thought it through.

“If that’s his goal, wouldn’t it have occurred to him by now that I’m not on the case? Well, I am, but not the way he may have intended. If he means to take me on, play with my head, wouldn’t you think he’d have noticed that I
haven’t
noticed?”

“Maybe he has, Sam. Maybe he’s got something else in mind. Who the hell knows?” Fiona was beginning to sound a little annoyed. “God, sometimes I hate people, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” Sam sighed. “I know what you mean …”

Y
ou’re awfully quiet today.” Mallory poked her head through the doorway into Sam’s office. “I wasn’t even sure you were here.”